Setting up your MobileFirst development environment

Overview

This tutorial covers the basics of the IBM MobileFirst development environment: supported Eclipse versions, installation of Eclipse and MobileFirst Studio as well as a tour of the Eclipse UI, and installation of the IBM MobileFirst Command line tool (CLI) and an introduction to the capabilities of the tools.

Agenda

Development environment: choice of operating system

MobileFirst Studio and MobileFirst CLI are supported on the following operating systems:

Windows

Apple OS X

Linux

Note: Using MobileFirst Studio, it is possible to create projects and applications for iOS also on Windows or Linux. However, due to restrictions set by Apple you can compile an iOS application only in OS X using the Xcode IDE.

Introduction to MobileFirst Studio

IBM MobileFirst Platform Studio is an Eclipse plug-in that supports the development of rich, mobile web, native, and hybrid apps. It contains an embedded version of MobileFirst Server, a bidirectional WYSIWYG editor, and standard web technologies and tools.

You use MobileFirst Studio to:

Develop rich HTML5, hybrid and native applications for all supported modern devices

The commands support tasks such as creating, adding, and configuring with the API library, adding the client-side properties file and performing the build and deploy of the application. From the command-line, you can create and deploy adapters, and test them locally. You can administer your project from CLI or REST services, or the Console, where you can control the local server and observe the logs.

Download and install MobileFirst Studio or MobileFirst CLI

Before you can install MobileFirst Studio you must install Eclipse. Instructions for installing a supported version of Eclipse and the MobileFirst Studio plug-in, or the MobileFirst command line tool are included with the IBM MobileFirst Platform Foundation Developer Edition:

Menubar and toolbar

Perspectives

A perspective is a special layout of particular views and tools that you need to use in your work. The currently open perspective occupies most of the Eclipse workbench. You can have more than one perspective open at a time, but only the active one is visible. You can access other open perspectives by using the toolbar on the upper-right side of the workbench.

Views

Views are designed to support interaction with information in your workbench. Eclipse is extensible, so that views can be designed to show nearly any information. Most common views are views of the file system, program output, and text files (generally dealt with in a special view called an editor). To add a view, select Window > Show View.

Editors

Editors are a special view, which is designed for viewing and editing data. One of the most common uses of an editor is for editing source code.

Encoding

If you are working on a Windows platform, before you begin to create projects and work with your Eclipse installation, go to Window > Preferences > General > Workspace, and change the text file encoding to UTF-8.